The following
Collection of Stories is offeredmerely as a specimen of the class
of literature towhich it belongs. The Editor
has not had theleisure to carry his researches
futher than a fewmanuscripts in the Museum which
were ready athis hand. He is aware of
the existence of nu-merous valuable manuscripts of
tales of this kindamong the treasures of the universities,
which, aswell as a still greater number
to be found in thelibraries of the continent, would,
without doubt,add much to our knowledge of the
history of me-dieval romance. The present
volume has alreadyexceeded the limit within which
it was originallyintended that it should be comprised.

This latter circumstance
has determined theEditor, also, to preface these
taled by only a briefintroduction; and he may perhps
be induced togive in another form, a sketch
of the history ofthe transmission of stories and
fables from onepeople to another in the middle
ages. A verylarge portion of our medieval stories
are derivedfrom the East, of which many examples
will be

vi

found in the present volume.
Some are derivedfrom classic writers, though often
disguised bythe Gothic garb in which they have
been clothedduring the transmission.
The two most remark-able instances of direct transmission
from theEast are the Collection by Peter
Alfonsi, compiledin Latin under the title of "Disciplina
Clericalis,"and that which was so long and
widely popularunder the title Seven Sages.

No manuscripts
are of more frequent occurrencethan collections of Tales like
those printed in thepresent volume; and we owe their
preservationin this form to a custom which
drew upon themonks the ridicule of the early
reformers. Thepreachers of the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fif-teenth centuries, attempted to
illustrate theirtexts, and to inculcate their doctrines,
by fablesand stories, which they moralized
generally byattaching to them mystical significations.
Theseillustrations they collected from
every source whichpresented itself, the more popular
the better, be-cause they more easily attracted
the attention ofpeople accustiomed to hear them.
Sometimesthey moralized the jests and satirical
anecdotescurrent among the people--sometimes
they adoptedthe fabliaux and metrical pieces
of the jongleurs,or minstrels--and not unfrequently
they abridgedthe plots of more extensive romances.
Eachpreacher made collections for his
own use--he

vii

set down in Latin the stories which
he gatheredfrom the mouths of his acquaintance,
selectedfrom the collections which had
already been madeby others, or turned into Latin,
tales which hefound in a different dress.
Hence it happensthat we seldom find two manuscript
collectionswhich agree with each other, and
that in differentmanuscripts we find the same tale
told in a varietyof shapes. I am inclined
to think that the periodat which these collections began
to be made wasthe earlier part of the thirteenth
century, andthat to that century, we owe the
compilation inLatin of most of these tales, though
the greaternumber of manuscripts may be ascribed
to thefourteenth.

In the
fourteenth century several writers beganto collect these tales more systematically,
and toform them into books with the moralizations
readydrawn out, for the use of future
preachers. Themost remarkable work of that kind
is the oneknown by the title of the Gesta
Romanorum. Onthis remarkable compilation, the
best informationwill be found in Sir Fredrick Madden's
Intro-duction to his edition (for the
Roxburhg Club) ofthe early English version.
We may look forwardfor much new light on this subject
from theedition of the Latin text in preparation
by Pro-fessor Keller. There are
several stories in thepresent volume, particularly the
first, which illus-

viii

trate the manner in which this collection
wasmade. The other collections are
most commonlygiven in the form of common-place
books, orready-made sermons. Of the former,
there aretwo important works which have
contributedmuch towards the present volume:
the “SummaPraedicantium” of John of Bromyard,
and the"Promptuarium Exemplorum."
John of Bromyardwas an English Dominican, who flourished
in thelatter part of the fourteenth century;
he arrangedin a very large book a kind of
dictionary of moraland theological subjects, in alphabetical
order,full of stories, and other popular
illustrations ofthe different subjects treated.
Perhaps no workis more worthy the attention of
those who are in-terested in the popular literature
and the history ofEngland in the fourteenth century.
A goodedition was printed at Nuremburg
in 1485, as Ican state from a comparison of
it with severalmanuscripts. The tales selected
from John ofBromyard for the present work,
are given froman excellent MS. In the British
Museum (MS.Reg. 7 E. IV). The “Promptuarium
Exem-plorum” was a compilation of the
earlier part ofthe fifteenth century: I knew it
only in theprinted editions, of which there
were several atthe end of the fifteenth and in
the earlier half ofthe sixteenth centuries.

I have
already stated that many of these tales

ix

appear to have been taken down from
oral recita-tion, and they seem to have been
transmittedby a similar medium to later ages.
It is one ofthe most interesting chapters of
the literary his-tory of our fore fathers, to trace
these stories, ap-parently lost in the political
and religious revolu-tions which followed the introduction
of printing,and suddenly making their reappearance
in the jestbooks, and other similar productions,
of the witsof the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Witha view of giving some idea of this
part of theirhistory, I have added a few notes
at the end ofthe volume: they might easily have
been enlarged,but I have been content to give
merely such in-stances of the recurrence of our
tales under dif-ferent forms at different periods,
as I have ob-served in the course of my own
reading. In thispoint of view, these notes must
be imperfect, andI should be sorry if they are taken
for more thanthey are worth.

In making
such a collection of stories, I couldnot altogether avoid those which
are more es-pecially classed under the title
of fables. Manyof the fables of the Middle Ages
are remarkablybeautiful. Those given in the text
of the presentvolume are taken chiefly from the
collection madeby Odo de Cerinton, an English
Cistercian monkof the end of the twelfth century.
In some re-spects my choice of these fables
has been influ-

x

enced by the desire to illustrate
the history ofthat most remarkable and influential
work of theMiddle Ages, the “ Romance of Renard
the Fox.”Several of these fables are evidently
taken fromthe romance, so popular at an early
period inGermany and France. We have hitherto
beenable to discover few traces of
this romance, inEngland, previous to the fifteenth
century. Thereare however, evident allusions
to it these fables.But the most decided proof of the
knowledge ofthis romance at an early period
in England isfound in an English metrical version
of a storyfrom the French Romance (II. 6455
to 7026 inMeon’s edition of the “ Roman du
Renart,” Siconme Renart fist avaler Ysengrin
dedenz le puis),which occurs in the MS. At Oxford,
written notlater than the reign of Edward
I, and which I havereprinted from the Reliquiae Antiquae
(to whichwork it was communicated by Sir
Frederick Mad-den) at the end of these introductory
observations.It is introduced here with the
more propriety,because it is the same story as
No. lvii, in the textof this volume; and it is somewhat
curios, thatwhile the English fable is a close
copy from theFrench text of the romance, the
Latin prose fable(also written in England) resembles
more closelythe same incident as told in the
German Reineke. As a further illustration
of the history of fables,I have given in the Appendix a
very curious col-

xi

lection of fables of the thirteenth
century, writtenin Latin rhyming verse, from a
manuscript in theBritish Museum (MS. Additional.
No. 11,619,fol. 189, ro.)
This collection agrees in its generalarrangement with the Latin prose
collection offables which goes under the name
of Romulus, --with the collection in French verse,
published byM. Robert, under the title of Ysopet
I, -and withthe French metrical fables of Marie
de France;but it is particularly interesting
for three fables atthe end, which are not found in
any other collec-tion (as far as I have been able
to learn), andwhich appear to be taken from some
branch ofthe “Roman du Renart.” In the notes
to thesefables, I have thought that it
would not be unin-teresting to point out to the general
reader inthe first place, how many of them
occur in theGreek collections which go under
the name ofEsop, and in the fables of Phaedrus,
or in thedifferent supplements to that writer;
and secondly,the order in which the same fables
stand in thetwo texts of Romulus, in the two
French Ysopets,and in the fables of Marie.

It was
thought also advisable to reprint fromLeyser, the Fables(or rather Fabliaux)
of Adolfus,because they afford a curious illustration
of thehistory of fiction; and because
Leyser’s work onthe medieval Latin poets is now
becoming a rarebook. Most of the stories in this
poem are taken

xii

from Peter Alfonsi. Of Adolfus
himself weseem to have no other information
than thatfurnished by the poem. He
states that he com-posed it in 1315, and he dedicates
it to Ulric, thena celebrated professor in the University
of Viennain Austria.

The third
article in the Appendix (no less im-portant in connection with the
history of fiction),belongs to a class of productions
of which I havealready printed two specimens in
my “EarlyMysteries and other Latin Poems
of the MiddleAges,” –the Comoedia Babionis,
and the Geta ofVitalis Blesenis. William
of Blois, was theyounger brother of the celebrated
Peter of Blois,who addressed to him some of his
letters, in oneof which he compliments him on
his poetic talents:--“Nomen vestrum diuturniore memora
quamquatuor abbati!e commendabile reddant
trageodiavestra de Flaura et Marco, versus
de Pulice etMusca, comedia vestra de Alda,”
&c.* I owe to

* Petr. Bles. Epist. Xciii.
In another letter (Epist. lxxvi),Peter speaks thus of his brother:
“Illud nobile ingeniumfratris mei magistri Gulielmi,
Quandoque in scribendis co-moedis et tragoediis quadam occuptione
servili degenerans.”It is striking characteristic of
the manners of the age, thatone distinguished ecclesiastic
should be found complimentinganother having written such indecent
ribadldry as forms thedenouement of the poem printed
in the present volume. Thegrosser incidents are found, with
some slight variations, insome of the early French fabliaux.

xiii

the kindness of Professor Dr. Endlicher
of Viennaa transcript of this poem from
the two manuscriptsin the Vienna Library.*
Professor Endlicherconjectured, from the circumstances
of its beingfound anonymously among the poems
of MatthaeusVindocinenis, and from its similarity
of the style tothe productions of that writer,
that Matthaeuswas the author of the Alda.
But I have sincefound a better copy among the Harlein
manu-scripts (MS. Harl. No. 3872), which
has the intro-ductory lines, wanting in the other
copies, and con-taining the name of the Author.
These introductorylines are also curious an account
of the informationthey afford us relating to the
life of William ofBlois, and they furnish some supplementary
matterto the article on this writer in
the Historic Lit-éraire de France, tom. xv.
p. 413, the compilerof which believed that none of
the writings ofWilliam of Blois had descended
to our times.

The last
article in the Appendix, the Poem DeAffra et Flavio, is taken from
a manuscript of thethirteenth century (MS. Cotton
Cleop. A. viii.Fol. 59 rº.), and is
a curious example of the class ofpoems to which the writers of that
age gave thetitle of Tragoedi!e. It bears
so close a resem-balance

balance in style to the preceding
poem by Williamof Blois, that we might almost
be led to attri-bute it to the same author.

I have
as yet only spoken of the Latin tales inthe present volume as illustrations
of the historyof fiction; but they have also
other claims on ourattention ; there are perhaps few
documentswhich throw more lights on the
private life anddomestic manners of our forefathers.
They con-tain characteristic anecdotes of
the differentorders of society: many of those
I have printedthrow light upon the character
of the minstrels orjongleurs; others illustrate popular
literature bythe numerous scraps of English
and Frenchpoetry which are found in them;
others againillustrate the private manners
of the monks, andthe popular doctrines of the old
Romish Church.Of this last class a much larger
selection mighthave been made, but in general
the monkishstories illustrative of the interference
and powerof the Virgin, and more particularly
those relatingto the real presence and the doctrine
of transub-stantiation, are so disgustingly
profane, that Ihave carefully avoided them.*

* I ought, perhaps, to observe
that I have reprinted thiscollection several Latin stories
from the Altdeutsche Blätter,which were communicated to that
work by Mr. Thomas, froma MS. of the thirteenth century
then in his possession, butnow transferred to the British
Museum.

xv

The notes
have already been mentioned. Myonly object in them has been to
make the book aspopular as I could, and with the
same object Ihave thought it would not be unacceptable
to adda brief glossary of the words least
likely to befound in common Latin dictionaries,
or which areused in acceptations not common
in classiclanguage. I have no right
to suppose that everyreader possesses the Glossary of
Ducango.